Jerusalem Day!

Happy Jerusalem Day! Today is a holiday to comemorate when Israel took all of Jersalem after the 6 Days War in 1967. So, it's a party in West Jerusalem, and not a party in East Jerusalem. We walked into what looked like the beginnings of a demonstration as we walked out of Damascus Gate this afternoon. We left the area quickly. The entire Old City was full of military people. We saw them everywhere, where normally there are only a few near the gates. Some of them even seemed like they were touring some of the sites in the city.

The group that I was with decided to go to West Jerusalem for lunch. Falafel is the best food EVER! Walking through West Jerusalem, it feels like a Europen city. As in, there's a train, like the Utah Trax, and people playing jazz in the streets. Couples actually touch and hold hands, and the women dress...not so conservatively. It's just...odd, especially coming from the old city, or East Jerusalem.
After wandering around for a bit, we headed back to the center by taking the long way through the old city. We had some time to kill, and we've heard a lot about it, so we decided to check out the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I was very much not prepared for going into that church.

From the outside, it seems very unassuming. And you can't tell at all how big it is. It just looks like a big stone building, with a random ladder on the outside (I talked about it in an earlier post). But then you walk in, and it's just amazing. Amazing. I can't describe how beautiful and amazing and awe-inspiring that church is. And that's just the church, when you consider what all is believed to have happened there...

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the place where Christ was thought to have been crucified, beautified, and then buried. The site was chosen by a women named Helena, who was Emporor Constantine's mother. Constantine was the Roman emperor who decided to make Christianity the official religion of Rome. Helena came to Jerusalem some time after that to find as many holy sites as she could. The Church of the Holy Sepulcre is one of them. A church was built, but was destroyed in 1009. The Crusaders rebuilt the church, and Saladin let the Christians keep it after he conquered the city.

Inside the church it felt...the best way that I can describe it is holy. The church felt holy. Not like a temple. I'm having such a hard time describing it. Like, you could feel all the prayers, the faith, the devotion of everyone who had ever and would ever come there, like it's seeped into the walls, and is resonating from every stone. I know that a lot of people dispute the actual places of things in and around the Old City, especially when dealing with events in the New Testament. Whether the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the "right place" or not, that place is sacred. I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to visit, and to be able to go again.